| Style | Description |
|---|
| Ambient house | Ambient house is a musical category founded in the late 1980s that is used to describe acid house featuring ambient music elements and atmospheres. |
| Ambient techno | A rarified, more specific re-orientation of ambient house, ambient techno is usually applied to artists such as B12, early Aphex Twin, the Black Dog, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Biosphere. |
| Ambient trance | Ambient trance is a blend of the genres of trance and ambient. |
| American fingerstyle guitar | Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (picking individual notes with a single plectrum called a flatpick) or strumming all the strings of the instrument in chords. Because it refers both to a means of making music and the music thus produced, fingerstyle is best understood as both a technique and as a key element in musical genres. |
| Americana | Americana refers to artifacts of the culture of the United States, the history and folklore resultant from its westward expansion. In music, Americana is a loose subset of American folk music, that is perhaps best defined as "classic American music" - ranging in style from roots-based bluegrass to alternative country, gospel, blues, zydeco, and other native forms. |
| Anadolu rock | Turkish rock music. Turkish rock is a fusion of Turkish folk and rock music. It emerged during the mid-1960s, soon after rock groups such as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Status Quo, and Omega became popular in Turkey. |
| Anarcho-punk | Anarcho-punk is a faction of the punk subculture that consists of bands, groups and individuals promoting anarchist politics. |
| Andean New Age | Andean New Age (music) is a product of Peruvian flute and Paraguayan harp music. The Peruvian roots stem from the Inca (Inka) influence circa 1200-1532 CE. In Peru, two important flutes are used: The quena, a flute much like the common recorder; and the zampoña, a pan flute. |
| Angklung | Angklung is a musical instrument made out of two bamboo tubes attached to a bamboo frame. Angklung is popular throughout Southeast Asia, but originated from Indonesia (used and played by the Sundanese since the ancient times). |
| Anti-folk | The music sub genre known as anti-folk (or antifolk) takes the earnestness of politically charged 1960s music and subverts it into something else. Although it is still highly debated exactly what the defining characteristics are, which vary from one artist to the next, it is fairly accepted that the music tends to sound raw or experimental, and generally mocks the seriousness and pretension of the established mainstream music scene and also mocks itself. |
| Apala | Apala is a musical genre, originally derived from the Yoruba people of Nigeria. It is a percussion-based style that developed in the late 1930s, when it was used to wake worshippers after fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The rhythms of apala grew more complex over time, influenced by Cuban music and eventually became quite popular in Nigeria. |
| Arabesk | Arabesque or Arabesk is a genre termed so by Turkish musicologists for a type of sound to come out of Turkey in the 1950s and 1960s. It has counterparts in a Greek form of pop music known as Skiladiko and Arabic pop music. |
| Argentinean rock | Argentine rock applies loosely to any variety of rock music, blues and heavy metal from Argentina. |
| Ars antiqua | Ars antiqua, also called ars vetus, refers to the music of Europe of the late Middle Ages between approximately 1170 and 1310, covering the period of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the subsequent years which saw the early development of the motet. |
| Ars nova | Ars nova was a stylistic period in music of the Late Middle Ages, centered in France, which encompassed the period roughly from the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel (1310 and 1314) until the death of Machaut (1377). |
| Artcore | Artcore is a term that refers to the practice of making works of art harder and faster than is traditionally expected or thought appropriate. Some of the major regions in North America associated with the origins of Artcore include: California, Texas, Washington, DC, Chicago, Toronto, Detroit, New York City, Vancouver and Boston. |
| Art rock | Art rock is a term used to describe a subgenre of rock music with "experimental or avant-garde influences" that emphasizes "novel sonic texture." |
| Ashiq | An Ashik is a mystic troubadour or traveling bard, in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran who sings and plays the saz, a form of lute. Ashiks' songs are semi-improvised around common bases. |
| Asian Underground | Asian Underground is a term associated with various British Asian musicians (mostly Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan) who blend elements of western underground dance music and the traditional music of their home countries. In the 1990s, Asian Underground was considered hip and broke through to the mainstream. The genre and other forms of South Asian music began to influence the UK's pop mainstream as acts like Björk, Bananarama, Erasure, and Siouxsie & the Banshees all released singles or remixes featuring South Asian instrumentation. Subsequently, Talvin Singh won a Mercury Music Prize for his album OK in 1999. |
| Astral Electro | The music discovered by music band SAMARKAND. |
| Australian country music | Australian country music is a vibrant part of the music of Australia. There is a broad range of styles, from bluegrass, to yodelling to folk to the more popular. |
| Australian pub rock | Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and still influencing contemporary Australian music today. |
| Australian hip hop | Australian hip hop music began in the early 1980s, primarily influenced by hip hop music and culture imported via radio and television from the United States of America. Since the late 1990s, a distinctive local style has developed. Australian hip hop is a part of the underground music scene with only a few successful commercial hits in the last decade. |
| Australian humour | Australian humour music (often quite similar in style to Australian country music) is based on irreverent, rude, but harmless humour. Its lyrics often include a lot of swearing and are rarely about controversial or meaningful issues. |
| Avant-garde jazz | Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines elements of avant-garde art music and composition with elements of traditional jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, contrary to the impression it may give that results from a very distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which improvisation may take place and often it may be partially or even completely composed note for note in advance. |
| Avant-garde metal | Avant-garde metal or experimental metal is generally regarded as a cross-genre reference to metal bands or more exactly as a stylistic adjunction with specific traits (just like progressive-, symphonic-, folk-). It is characterized by large amounts of experimentation and by non-standard sounds, instruments, and song structures. Some of the earliest instances of a band being classified as avant-garde lie with Celtic Frost, Master's Hammer, Fleurety and Ved Buens Ende. |
| Avant-garde music | any kind of experimental music incorporated bizarre ideas, structures or instrumentation; Experimental music is a term introduced by composer John Cage in 1955. |
| Axé | Axé music is a popular music genre originated in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in the late 1970s, fusing different afro an Brasilian genres, such as Caribe's Marcha, Frevo, Forró and Reggae, with it's fusian genre that is known as Calypso. The word "axé" comes from a greeting ritual used in the Candomblé and Umbanda religions that means "good vibration". |
